by Mlyn Hurn
“I hate to interrupt, but you are starting to fade.”
Broderick stood slowly, looking down at his hands. He turned to look at Kerry. “At least you found the way to my Jenny.”
Kerry shook her head at the sadness in his voice. “I think you played a trick on me that first night. I am guessing that you sort of took over my Broderick’s body, in the bed. You enticed me into his bedroom with your smoky spirit, and I think he wasn’t completely himself.”
She watched as the ghost straightened his spine, holding himself stiffly erect. Kerry narrowed her eyelids, not accepting his affronted image. She spoke quickly though, as she saw he was fading more quickly. “It doesn’t matter now. I am going to walk over to Jenny and see if she will do the same with me, or at least partly. Meanwhile, you need to go and find my Broderick.” Kerry paused as she realized how easily she kept calling the modern Broderick “hers.”
She stopped beside Jenny. “Is there a quicker way back out of here?”
Broderick nodded. “In the hall, ten paces more to your right. Push hard on the right side of the wall.” The last word was so faint Kerry barely heard it. Once again, she was alone with Jenny.
Kerry decided to jump in, feet first, so she pulled the chair a little bit farther out, away from the desk. Right before she sat down on the seat, right on top of the misty ghost, she pulled the gold ring from her pocket, clutching it in her closed fist. She didn’t feel any different as she spoke softly. “This is your chance, Jenny. If you want to tell the man you loved how pissed off you were at him dying and leaving you alone, now is the time!”
Coldness seemed to begin seeping into her body, the same as it had the evening she’d found the indentations in the wall. Looking down at her hands, Kerry thought she could see mist begin to swirl around them. The sense of chill continued until she was nearly shivering from it. Lifting her hands, she began rubbing them up and down her arms, over the sleeves of her shirt. That’s when Kerry realized she wasn’t rubbing cotton any longer. It was silk, the same color as Jenny’s dress, but it was becoming a much brighter, stronger color. The chill was fading as she stood.
As she walked toward the open doorway, Kerry realized her feet were now in silken shoes, her sneakers having faded away. It was strange as she walked the ten paces toward the wall…her hands reaching out, knowing exactly where on the wall to push—
* * * * *
Broderick was still listening on the phone, staring at the far wall of books. Less than ten seconds after hanging up from the business call, the phone had rang again. Picking it up impatiently, he heard his friend’s voice on the line.
“Hello, John.”
Fifteen minutes later he was still listening as John prattled on about something. Broderick had surprised himself as he thought that perhaps he wouldn’t open the bed and breakfast after all. His law practice here was doing much better than he had expected, and he could easily expand it to full time. It would be nice to have the house all to themselves for a while. And one or two kids would be pretty cool as well, if Kerry liked the idea too.
Still, he had reasoned, perhaps he could have John run the place for a split of profits, and eventually partial ownership. That way Kerry and he could look into purchasing a house beyond the tourist area and, he couldn’t help but add, away from the ghosts.
His feet were propped on his desk, not really listening to John at all, when he saw the bookcase start to move. There was no mistaking the appearance of a hand coming around the end of it. Broderick shot to his feet. He hurriedly considered two plausible reasons: first, someone was breaking into the house; or second, and more likely, Kerry had not waited upstairs for him.
“I’ll call you back, John!” he shouted into the phone, and hung up.
He was partway across the room when he stepped into a swirling mist. The next step he felt chilled all over, and by the third, he was dressed in colonial finery. His hand was reaching out, but it didn’t seem like it was his—
A woman had just stepped out from behind the bookcase. She looked somewhat like Kerry except she was dressed in a pink dress. The style was more than two centuries old, but the dress looked new. The stunned look on her face as she saw him for the first time was unmistakable.
Chapter Eleven
Broderick couldn’t believe that he was alive once again. The best part was that the oddly dressed woman’s plan must have worked, because before him stood his Jenny.
“Jenny, my love! Can you ever forgive me?”
Jenny was still reeling under what was happening. She was part of someone else, not her body, but her thoughts and feelings. She spoke quickly. “What is going on here?”
Broderick reached toward Jenny’s hand, but she jerked it back after just a second of warmth. He paused, seeing her confusion. That’s how he had felt just…a few days he guessed must have passed. Or at least that is what he had gathered from the woman who looked quite a bit like Jenny. He did admit that seeing all that leg exposed beneath those odd clothes could have quite an effect on a man, ghost or not.
“It’s all right, my love. I wanted to hold you once again, and tell you how much I loved you. I need you to know that I should have married you before I left. I was a fool to ask you to wait.”
Jenny nodded slowly. “You never came back. It was half a year before we learned that you had.” Her voice choked on the words, the pain as new as it had been more than two centuries ago. “That you had been struck down, with all your men. General Washington came to the house though, commending you and your men’s bravery. H-he was most kind in his condolences.”
“I am so very sorry, my love. I didn’t really know I’d been struck, it was so fast.”
Jenny smiled a little, rubbing her tears away. “It’s just so sad that you never knew—” Her voice broke as she told the man she loved with all of her heart the truth. “You had a son, Broderick. He was born six months after you had left. Hearing that you were gone…” tears overflowed her eyes, “I gave birth the day after the General visited. I hesitated telling you because I didn’t want you to worry about me…us.”
Broderick reached out and pulled Jenny into his arms, hugging her so tightly she had to gasp to breathe. Relaxing his hold, he held her close to his body. As they both realized what they had lost, tears slipped slowly down both of their faces. Jenny sobbed softly, remembering how lonely she had been in the beginning.
“You never got to hold your son in your arms, and for that I beg your forgiveness, my husband.”
Broderick threaded his fingers through her hair, tilting her face upward. “It is I who begs for your forgiveness. Let us forget all that, and forgive each other. I want you to rest peacefully, with me.”
Jenny nodded her head, beginning to feel weak. “I forgive you, and I love you with all my being. Your son would have made you proud, my love.” She slowly leaned back and showed him the ring in her hand. “I found this among your things, in that silly little puzzle box of yours.”
Broderick picked the ring up and slid it onto her finger. He could see the change starting, her skin seeming paler. “I have so much to say, my love.” He kissed her quickly, and deeply, wanting to share again, even if for a moment only, the passion and fire they had once known together. As their lips slowly parted, he could feel himself weakening.
“We are fading, my love. Hold me tightly, and we will leave this world together, as we were meant to do.”
“Oh, Broderick,” Jenny whispered softly. The weakness was growing and she felt colder with each passing moment. “I love you, now and forever!”
Broderick’s voice was equally faint as he replied. “I will always, and eternally, be yours.”
* * * * *
Kerry realized she was standing in Broderick’s arms. Opening her eyes, she saw him staring down at her. Then she saw the faint swirling of misty fog beginning to drift away from the clasped bodies. She saw the stain of tears on Broderick’s face and she knew instantly it had worked. Together, she and Broderick had giv
en two other lovers a last chance to be with one another. The feeling of sadness and joy swept over her, and she started to cry once again. She pressed her face close to Broderick’s heart, covered thinly by his shirt.
“I love you,” she whispered without thinking.
Broderick tugged on her hair until she lifted her face to his. “I love you too, but you are going to have to explain a few things to me. One of them will have to be about waiting—”
Kerry grinned and nodded. “Gladly. I should have told you what was happening, but I was afraid we didn’t have time. I just felt such overwhelming urgency, but even now I can’t explain it. I just knew it was now, or never.”
Broderick nodded, accepting her words. “Very well. For tonight, I think we should close things up. We can decide later on what we want to do about this secret passage.”
“We?”
“Yeah. I want you to hang around after the conference ends.”
Kerry frowned at him. “Hmm. Hang around? For how long?”
Broderick lowered his head toward her, whispering as his mouth covered her parted lips. “Fifty years, but considering I’m forty, we’ll shoot for forty years to start.”
Kerry’s heart soared at his words, even though she didn’t get the chance until much later that night to tell him he had a deal.
Epilogue
The sun was hot today, Kerry realized as she knelt on the ground, pulling up the stray weeds that had crept into the small area, sectioned off by stones. Broderick was still inside going over unnecessary last minute items with John before they made the last trip to their new home a few miles away. As planned, John was working at the bed and breakfast full time now.
Kerry had grown to love so many of the antique pieces about the house that it was going to be hard to leave them. Well, it would be difficult, as she had explained to her husband for the hundredth time, not seeing them every day. But they had agreed it would be best to be completely settled in the new house before the baby arrived.
Kerry shifted from her knees to her bottom with some difficulty. She didn’t care about the grass that was clinging to her jeans. Sitting cross-legged, she was grateful for the stretch waist. She paused in her weed picking to rub her hand over her swollen belly. They had about seven weeks to go and she was getting impatient. Reaching over, she pulled the last stubborn bit of wild grass that had grown up around the stone marker she had placed here more than a year ago.
Her golden wedding band glinted from the sunlight that dabbled through the nearby trees. Broderick had suggested that they use the ring purchased more than two hundred years ago, but Kerry had been too fearful of losing it. After it was duplicated, including the inscription, they had returned the ring to the puzzle box. Luckily Broderick had figured it out without too much difficulty.
Kerry had had a special case constructed after their wedding, and inside the glass display were the box, the Bible and lace hankie. The old wooden container had been carefully cleaned and restored. On top of it rested Jenny’s journal, which was closed, and the book of love poems, open to one she had found that Jenny had marked carefully as her favorite.
While she weeded the garden, Kerry couldn’t help but recall all that happened over the months following the end of the convention. In almost no time at all she had written a story about colonial Broderick and his Jenny. While she waited for the story’s acceptance, the contract, and then subsequent rewrites, she had called Miznari and Natalie and left messages for them, hoping they had returned. Both had vanished soon after the start of the convention and their disappearances had stumped the local authorities. Kerry couldn’t help but worry about them…until the message from Miz and the dream about Natalie.
Kerry paused as she tugged on a particularly troublesome ragweed, and thought about the message and the dream. The e-mail from Miz had seemed quite strange, but Kerry had no doubt it was from her friend. In trying to understand what had happened to Miz, she’d memorized the note:
Hey girl,
Sorry for the vanishing act, Ker. You’d never believe what has happened since Halloween night if I told you, so I’m not even gonna try. Don’t worry your pretty ass about me. I’m having a hell of a time, and damn but I wish you could see me now! Tell Nat to stay loose.
Who knows, maybe one of these days the three of us will have a chance to grab some Italian food again and gab. I’ll miss you both like hell.
Miz
P.S. Did you finally get laid? You sure needed it, girlfriend.
It puzzled Kerry, yet reassured her at the same time. Only Miz could have sent that e-mail, no doubt about it. She’d tried to respond, but the reply came back that there was no such address.
A rivulet of sweat trickled down the small of Kerry’s back as she recalled the most amazing dream she’d had about Natalie, just days after she’d received the e-mail from Miz. The dream had been so real, and so vivid, Kerry was positive it had been a message from Nat.
In the dream, a world of unbelievable beauty surrounded Natalie. The air was so clean and so fresh that everything was brighter and more vivid than anything Kerry could have imagined on Earth. A powerful man with black hair and tattoos beneath each eye approached Natalie. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her so tenderly that Kerry had felt the incredible love between the two of them. In fact, the love had seemed to surround them like a beautiful aura. While sensing Nat’s sadness at being unable to visit her earthbound adoptive family, she had the overwhelming awareness that Nat was completely happy and content.
Natalie had gone home…to the world in which she’d been born.
As the dream faded, Kerry had thought she’d seen a faerie flitting by in the background. And the man Natalie was in love with, his ears…had they been pointed?
Despite the bizarreness of the dream, Kerry somehow knew that she could rest assured that Natalie was fine, and happier than she’d ever been.
Kerry surveyed her garden as her thoughts moved away from her friends and to her own incredible life and the past few months.
Once the royalty check for the story about colonial Broderick and his Jenny arrived, Kerry immediately purchased a grave marker with colonial Broderick’s and Jenny’s engraved names upon it. She had his birth and death dates, but she could only find a reference to Jenny’s passing, so under her name was the year only. It had seemed the right thing to do—a remembrance of their love and devotion, cut short by war. Below the names and dates, she had added “Together forever.”
As usual, she started to cry. Combined with her thoughts about her friends, whom she missed, despite knowing they were happy, and the feelings that always bubbled up when she remembered her “colonial ghost” and his lost love. She was happy she could help them, yet sad that they had never been a family. To her it was natural that she would cry—usually a bucket or two according to Broderick.
“Hey! Beautiful weed picker! Are you ready to hit the road?”
Kerry turned, rubbing at her cheeks. “All done, but I need help getting up this time.”
Broderick walked over to where she was seated and saw her tears. Pulling her to her feet, he leaned down and kissed the tears from each cheek. “You did a good thing, sweetheart. I have no doubt that they are together, and happy.”
Kerry laughed, nodding her head. “I know. And we did it together. I couldn’t have done it alone, remember? It’s just the regret that they never got the chance for all we have.”
Broderick wrapped his arm around her shoulders, steering her towards the drive where one car was parked, filled with “stuff,” and his motorcycle. “I understand, honey. Look at it this way, my love. You have told their story and set this marker for generations to come.” He paused and made a sweeping gesture with his hand towards the roses, which grew behind the stone. “Thanks to you and your research, we now have the correct version of how the name ‘Fair Rose’ came about.”
Kerry laughed and nodded her head. “Yes, poor John. The truth about one of your ancestors cultivating a hybrid r
ose wasn’t nearly as exciting as his tale about a dashing rogue, romancing all the fair maidens in the county, and leaving them roses.”
Broderick laughed, adding with a grin. “I imagine John will still tell the guests his story. Now, the big decision is at hand!”
Kerry looked up at her husband, frowning at his tone. The sweeping gesture of his hand told its own tale. “I can’t ride on that! I won’t fit!”
“Sure you will, Kerry. The doctor said it was still safe for you to ride, and John will drive the car over for us.” He curled his mouth down, and Kerry saw a distinct pout before he added, “Probably the last chance we’ll get to ride for sometime.”
Kerry looked from the cycle to the car, where John was now standing, his arms folded as he waited patiently. Finally, she nodded her head, but added quite seriously. “You’ll have to help me get on this black beast first.”
Broderick grinned and helped his wife get comfortable before seating himself. After making sure Kerry had her helmet secured, he felt her hands come around his stomach as far as they could and then clutch at his shirt. Powering the cycle up, he rode the short distance to the car, ignoring Kerry’s shout of surprise. Grinning at his friend, he shouted.
“Take your time, John. We’ll be taking the long way home.”
Kerry squealed his name as the tires spun a little before they roared towards their new home together.
About the Author
A resident of Indiana, Mlyn worked as a registered nurse for 23 years in pediatrics. Reading Barbara Cartland and Harlequin romance novels in high school spurred her to start writing. She did technical writing for her employers until she started writing erotica four years ago. Mlyn is single and lives with her cranky cat Georgia, who she named after her favorite artist for inspiration, Georgia O’Keeffe.
The author welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.